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Moribund Lao


panadolsandwich

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When I go to the trouble to learn a language I usually expect it to stick around. Don't get me wrong - Lao is useful, but all the cachet with this new generation is speaking Thai. They grow up on Thai TV these days (with a dash of Hollywood - god love them). I love the way Thai girls just speak Thai here - as if they're colonising patricians - and you can't help but notice the wistful look on these young Laos girls as they earnestly listen.

 

All that being said if you talk to a Lao girl - for instance - 'go take a shower, make it damned quick because I'm horny as hell', well if you say it in Lao it seems to have more authority to it - more of the air of command if you like, and Thai in that case is punily formative, overdressed and too formal - too limp wristed.

 

Lao will be dead in 50 years, or as good as - or I could be wrong... Vientiane is such a humdrum town - and talking Thai and Laos can be the chief source of entertainment...

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Lao may be passe in Laos, but it is all the rage in Issan. ;)

 

p.s. Lao sounds more "authoritative" because Thai was "politened up" by the government in the 1930s and '40s and is taught that way in schools. Listen to working class Thai males in Bangkok and you will still hear the old style Thai. The kids pick it up and use it among themselves, apparently deciding that speaking crudely is cool!

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